Three students, Zan, Patrick, and Brandyn, and the instructor of the collision repair program at Butler Community College attended the Collision Day training at Vision 2010 in Overland Park. The training was excellent and the students expressed that they were impressed and learned a lot while attending the training event.

Vision is an ASA training event held every year. This is only the second year that they have included the collision repair industry, but with the quality of training provided, I believe that it will grow as the automotive training has grown over the years.

If you did not attend the training this year, you missed out. We learned what it take to make money in this industry and how to promote your businesses.

Mike Anderson
Mike taught two classes. The first class was a three hour class on estimating. As I mentioned, we had students and instructors from several schools, shop owners, insurance adjusters, and vendors attend the class and I overheard all of them expressing the value and what they absorbed in the classes. Mike also taught another three hour class on marketing your business. Again, this was a very informational class, which was packed with value for everyone in the room. You can learn more about Mike at WagonWork.com

Kristen Felder
Kristen with Collision Hub taught a class on social networking. She presented us with alarming facts about the importance of getting your business exposure with social networking. Kristen also presented a few tools available of how to do it. If you are not currently using tools like Facebook and Twitter to promote your business, you may find your customers going to someone who does. Kristen mentioned that the Collision Hub searches Twitter and helps people inquiring about having their vehicle repaired and helps them by recommending repair shops that are a member of the Collision Hub. The Collision Hub is free to join and it may result in free leads for your business. You can join this network by visiting CollisionHub.com

Vision also had the insurance commissioners from both Kansas and Missouri speak and inform us how each state works and the steps to take if you feel an insurance company violated the rights of your customer or your repair shop.

Vision is held every March in Overland Park and I highly recommend it to the entire collision repair and related industries. It will definitely be worth your time and you will leave the training with more knowledge than you came to the training with. I had the opportunity to network with several different instructors in Kansas and Missouri and hope to see more of them next year.